


The Arrow in Exile

by Aja



Category: Geraldine Harris - Seven Citadels Quartet
Genre: Gen, Yuletide, Yuletide 2008
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-25
Updated: 2008-12-25
Packaged: 2017-12-29 08:06:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1002989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aja/pseuds/Aja
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kerish struggles to understand the legacy his uncle left behind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Arrow in Exile

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yhlee](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=yhlee).



> This story incorporates and contains spoilers for the unpublished epilogue to the SeVen Citadels, which may be found here: http://www.geocities.ws/Athens/Forum/9148/seven-citadels.html#epilogue

> Book of the Emperors: _Songs_
> 
> __
> 
> The waves lay gently beneath the sail of Imarko.  
>  Her face looked towards the Golden City;  
>  the zeloka carried her song across the sea.  
>  Ah, Sing! Sing the song of Imarko,  
>  of the ships that bore your children home.  
>  We will look towards your temple;  
>  to you, our arms are outstretched.
> 
> \- Song of Jose, the City of Dreamers

  
  


Kelinda allowed silence to accompany them back from the temple. Kerish for once was uncharacteristically quiet, and Kelinda could not tell whether it was because his father's mood was affecting him or whether he was purely lost in thought. Forollkin's eyes were always darker after the noon ceremonies. Kelinda did not trouble, these days, to know why. Some things Forollkin would always keep from her; others were so obvious they did not need to be voiced.

"The coming of the ancestors," said Kerish suddenly. "They never said why."

"What?" Forollkin responded as if being called out of a walking sleep.

"Why did the ships come?" Kerish had stopped walking and was staring thoughtfully at the ground. "Where did they sail from?"

Forollkin laughed and met Kelinda's eyes as Kerish abruptly dropped to his knees in the dirt, one hand already moving to sweep landscapes into being from dust and trailings. 

"They couldn't have come from Erandachu," Kerish said thoughtfully. "They would have landed further north. But if they set out from Ellerinonn--" he drew the sea between them, a great sweeping arc in the dust --"Why wouldn't he have just met them here at Tir-Racneth? Why make them sail so far? Couldn't he just take a boat out to meet them halfway?"

Forollkin's laughter grew into a rich, deep rumble. Kerish only looked more disconcerted at this. Kelinda knelt by him.

"Keep these questions in your heart and in your head," she said, tapping his forehead, "and when you are old enough to study in the temple, you may ask the elders."

Kerish pondered this, then shook his head. "I am old enough to ask questions of the sorcerors --then why not the priests as well?"

Forollkin and Kelinda exchanged glances. There was no easy way to explain the conviction both Vethnar and Ellandellore shared: that the child should be free to study among them, and grow up versed in the Book of the Emperors until he should be taken before the priests. Even had they wanted to keep him away from the books of the ancestors, Kelinda acknowledged fondly, it would have been a struggle.

She smoothed his brown hair back from his forehead. "The temple has rituals meant for all to observe," she said. "That includes you."

"But I have too many questions," protested Kerish, "and no time to wait. "If I could just be presented _now_ \--" 

"No," said Forollkin a bit too briskly. "Keep your distance from Zeldin while you may. You will be lost to him soon enough." He leaned down, pulled Kerish to his feet, and offered Kelinda his arm to stand.

Kerish stood and dusted off his clothes, then straightened and looked up at his father. "As my uncle was?" he asked calmly.

Kelinda was suddenly struck by how very old he seemed, far older even than the wisest child of his age.

Forollkin's reaction was slight, but Kelinda could see it - the sudden unclenching of the muscles in his jaw, as if the question alone had sprung something loose in him.

"Yes," he answered after a moment, his tone and his expression steady and unchanging. 

"So - " Kerish bit his lip, as if he were struggling to push the words past the look on his father's face. "What they say, then - that the Third Prince is coming back. It's not true?"

Forollkin looked away sharply, and Kelinda watched his eyes move to the distant cluster of flags near the temple entrance, where exiles from each of the fallen Nine Cities had made their way to praise Zeldin where they could.

Kelinda hesitated, then bent to speak into his ear. "The rock your father showed you - he believes it looks like a marsh kitten."

"It does," said Forollkin stiffly, but not without amusement.

"And you believe when you touch it, it purrs."

"It does," said Kerish. "I can feel its warmth beneath my fingers."

"Yet to everyone else," Kelinda said, "it's just a rock. And rocks don't purr. So your story can't be true."

Kerish frowned. "But it is the truth," he said. "It does purr."

Kelinda smiled down at him. "So you tell the truth about your Cat Rock," she said, "The way our friends from the South are telling the truth about the Return of the Third Prince."

Forollkin glanced at her. She let her smile fall on him as well, and he reached out to take her hand.

"Galkians have hope," he said, and in his voice she recognized that he had stored away, for the moment, all his bitterness and regret at this particular faith. "They expect your uncle will return to them. But they cannot follow his journey. They cannot see it the way you can see your rock. So not all of them believe."

"Then they need a new hope," Kerish murmured, slipping his hands into his pockets and following his father's gaze towards the nine flags. "We will give them one, he and I."

Kelinda involuntarily squeezed her husband's hand tighter where it was laced in his. "Kerish?" she said. "What do you mean?"

But her son was already turning down the path toward home, singing the song of Tor-Koldin as he ran. She stood watching him, struck to the core by wonder and alarm: for his Godborn eyes at that moment had flashed with an understanding so deep she could barely draw courage to comprehend what it could mean: for the Nine Cities, for Galkis, for Forollkin - for herself.

"He will learn the folly of their hope," Forollkin said, his voice a dull echo of the cheerfulness he had forced for his son's benefit a moment before. "We all must."

Kelinda allowed herself to take him in, to study him for the first time since the fleet had arrived from their latest journey through the alliance. "And yet," she said after a moment, "You fight for their hope."

"I fight," said Forollkin. "That is enough."

"One day," said Kelinda, "perhaps it will be."

Joined in their silence, they followed Kerish-lo-Seldon towards Tir-Racneth Tower.  
  


> Book of the Emperors: _Origins_
> 
> __
> 
> On the day they were to reach the shore, Imarko stood on the bow of the ship with her face turned towards Galkis. And the captain and crew were amazed, and entreated her to go below deck, but she would not be moved, and said, "I will look for the one who has arrived on my prayers, and he will know that I have seen him from far off."
> 
> And when they landed, they saw a lone figure walking along the white beach, and Imarko went out alone to meet him. Together they walked the length of the shore, not as strangers just met, but as friends coming together after a long separation.

  
  


Kerish was dreaming. He knew he was dreaming because nowhere in all of their cursed time in Erandachu had they encountered a landscape as grassy as the one he was roaming now. The rich crag-moss was alive and cool and lush beneath his hands, and all around him, banebirds were singing - he was sure they were banebirds, although he could not see them, only hear them urging him higher over the mountainous terrain. Something about it all seemed extremely familiar somehow... he struggled to remember, and in typical dream fashion did so the instant it no longer mattered. He had just pulled himself out onto a long narrow ledge overlooking the vast forest floor below him. The rock itself was flat and green, and so moist that he found himself grabbing handfuls of sod to keep from slipping and falling over the edge. It was ludicrous to think that in a dream he might be afraid of falling, but it had been such a long journey, undertaken on a whim, and now that he was so very close to his goal he could not risk even the slightest chance of failure...

All at once he understood. He reached around eagerly for the bow at his back, just as a voice from the opposite side of the canyon said lightly, "There's no need for all that."

He blinked and looked up.

The Trieldiss blinked back.

Despite the risk of loosing his footing he jumped up and lunged back against the rock, frantically fumbling for the bow.

"You're no Poet Emperor," said the Trieldiss caustically. It sounded a little like Gidjabolgo. Kerish laughed at this, and forced himself to relax a bit.

"I've been chasing you," he said. 

"Have you?"

The Trieldiss was indeed white - a whiteness of a kind Kerish was sure he could only have dreamed. It wasn't possible for something so beautiful to really exist, was it? "I know I have," he said. He tried again to fumble the bow out of its hold.

"Are you so eager to hunt me, then?"

"I want to learn to use the arrow," Kerish said. "I have to prove to Forollkin that I'm a man."

"Surely your brother thinks you are a man already."

"He doesn't know me," Kerish answered bitterly. "He doesn't know who I am."

"And you do?"

Kerish glared at the Trieldiss, but it was already gone, vanished through the undergrowth into the woods. He cursed and tried to guage the distance across the pass. There was no way he could jump across, no way to readily bridge the gap.

"Come back!" he cried desperately. "Come back and teach me how to hunt you!"

He felt tears falling, and for a moment they were so hot he lost the illusion of sleep and felt them real upon his skin, shivering down his cheeks. He shut his eyes to ward them off, but it did no good. The feeling of helplessness would not fade.

A moment later, the sensation was gone, replaced by a strange, gentle warmth that covered him and bade him look up. When he did, the Trieldiss was there again, and this time, when it spoke, its voice was that of the lady Imarko.

"Kerish-lo-Taan," she said. "You will not hunt today. Your journey is not that of a warrior. You must be patient, and ready yourself for the road still to come."

"But I am ready now," he protested, though he no longer knew what he was ready for.

"Be patient," she said again. "Your brother's time is not your own." 

"Then if I cannot hunt," he said. "Let me fight him. Let me prove to him and to Zeldin that I am a man."

"And will you be so powerful when you are no longer a child?" said the Trieldiss.

"How can a child have power?" he said. "How can I capture the keys when I do not know my own strength?"

"The Poet-Emperor searched for me," replied the Trieldiss sadly, "only to find he could not loose my arrow. Was this the strength of a child?"

"My lady," Kerish said, "I do not have the heart of a poet." He tried to answer respectfully, but the words sounded sharp and resentful on his tongue. Even as he heard himself speak, he felt ashamed. 

"No," said the Trieldiss. "Your hand must be willing, not to stay the arrow, but to loose it upon yourself. You must be willing to pluck out your own heart and offer it to all those who will hope in you."

"Then let me justify their hope," Kerish said desperately, though he did not understand. "Let me fight."

"Then be it so," she said, and he awoke. 

He lay, just as he had every night for months, pressed between the hard earth and the furs of the Sheyasa. It was still dark, and in the fuzzy moments before clarity hit him fully he lay still, listening to the cries of the tribesmen.

It was the morning of the raid.

Later, dawn crept over the tribe as they bid goodbye to the warriors. Forollkin studiously avoided their gazes until every now and then a word from Gwerath would rouse him to eye contact. When the time came to depart, Forollkin hugged his brother stiffly, nodded awkwardly to Gwerath, and turned away without a word. Kerish felt the coldness of Forollkin's departure envelop them both, though together they only stood in silence. 

After I have shown you my true strength, he thought. Then, and only then, we will be equals, you and I. You will be warm to me again, and I will understand you.

"I will show you," he murmured softly, reaching inside his robes to clasp the Jewel of Zeldin. "I am not a child."

High in the eastern sky above them, Keshnyarmee flickered and waned in the dawn. 

  
  


> The Book of the Emperors: _Chronicles_
> 
> _"When life has given me new ears and death a new tongue, then I will sing of Zeldin."_  
>  \- Tor-Koldin, the Poet-Emperor

  
  


End.

 


End file.
